At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

January 14, 2016

(++++) DESIGNED FOR FUN AND FACTS

Small to Scary Animals. By
Aubre Andrus. Scholastic. $5.99.

Bunny vs. Monkey. By Jamie
Smart. David Fickling Books. $7.99.

Koob: The Backwards Book.
Scholastic. $11.99.

Books need not be simple
rectangular objects square-cut for ease of page turning. Sometimes book design
can itself become an important part of the reading experience, and a way to
involve people more fully in a book’s content. Small to Scary Animals, for example, features pages cleverly cut in
two different ways: if you flip from page to page from the upper-right corner,
you see baby animals in all their adorableness, on pages with the word “small”
shown throughout the background; but if you flip from the lower-right corner,
you see those animals fully grown and frequently in, yes, scary poses, and with
the word “scary” all over the background. A gray wolf pup, for example, is as
cute as they come, but a large and snarling adult gray wolf is not to be trifled
with; likewise, a skinny-legged moose calf looks endearingly awkward as it
stands in a field, but you would not want to come face-to-face with the
full-grown moose shown facing the reader, head down as if ready to charge, with
huge widespread antlers. Aubre Andrus offers mostly straightforward animal
information in the book’s text, although even basic facts about some of the
animals shown here can be fascinating – for instance, the fact that baby
porcupines are called “porcupettes” and are born with soft quills. He also
gives young readers a chance to see some unusual creatures, such as baby
stingrays (which are called “pups”). The book is not 100% scientifically
accurate – for example, it says of snakes that “the mother snake keeps the eggs
warm before they hatch,” but in fact very few snakes do this. By and large,
though, it offers correct information; and equally importantly, its unusual
design helps readers understand clearly and visually that even if small wild
animals look cute, they are still wild – and even if they are not dangerous
when very young, many will grow up to be large and potentially ferocious.

Bunny vs. Monkey is about make-believe animals, not real ones, and
is a traditionally rectangular book, but the design is important here, too.
Jamie Smart’s book is a graphic novel, but one that is much closer to
traditional comic strips than are most graphic novels. Instead of having a
single extended story, Bunny vs. Monkey
has a series of two-pagers, each of them not much longer than a newspaper comic
strip. And although there is some variation in panel size, most of the panels
are square or rectangular instead of being created in the multiple sizes and
shapes of cutting-edge graphic novels. The simplicity of design and layout
parallels the simple stories, which revolve around power-seeking, nastily
mischievous but ultimately feckless Monkey, good guy and forest protector
Bunny, and various subsidiary characters. Monkey ends up in the forest when
scientists put him in a rocket and fire him into space, but the rocket crashes
just over a nearby hill, so the scientists say, “Ah well, let’s just give up,”
and leave Monkey to his own devices. Monkey initially thinks he is on another
planet and proceeds to try to create “Monkey-topia” by conquering the other
animals, despite Bunny’s comment, “You can’t just show up and tell us what to
do.” After a few stories, the whole other-planet notion falls away and Bunny vs. Monkey simply becomes a set of
silly good-guy-vs.-bad-guy stories. Monkey get an ally in the form of Skunky,
an inventor whose diabolical creations never seem to work quite right: Metal
Steve, for example, is a robot that likes to swim and is not hurt by water.
Also on the “bad” side is Action Beaver, who has had a few too many bumps on the
head, does not say any words (only grunts and odd exclamations), and spends
most of his time banging into things. Bunny’s friends and allies include the
squirrel Weenie, who loves to cook and bake, and Pig, who is the most baby-like
character, given to comments such as, “It feels sparkly in my tummy.” There is
also “Le Fox,” a sort of anti-Skunky who has “spent many years digging a
network of tunnels underneath these woods, should the time for warfare arise,”
but whose initial appearance has him stopping one of Monkey’s schemes by
popping up from underground and simply saying, “Stop that.” The book’s
pleasant, easy-to-handle design and the equally easy-to-deal-with design of the
stories within it combine to make Bunny
vs. Monkey enjoyably silly, much less challenging than many graphic novels,
and an appealing way for readers who are a bit too young for more-typical
graphic-novel intensity to learn about and enjoy this form of storytelling.

One point of book design is
permanence, or at least being long-lasting – that being one reason many people
continue to prefer information in books to the same information obtained
online. But sometimes a book is designed for its own destruction. That sort of
backwards thinking about books fits right into the design of Koob: The Backwards Book, a kind of
crafts-project thingie shaped like a parallelogram rather than a rectangle and
intended to be turned upside-down and read from back to front once you get past
the front cover, which thus is really the back cover, while the end is really
the beginning. Got it? Some of the material in Koob is clever and some is simply mindless, but almost all of it is
designed to make Koob unusable for
more than one run-through – parents should decide what lesson that will teach
before they buy the, err, thing. Koob
says, for example, to write a secret message on a left-hand page and then glue
that page to the right-hand one facing it. It says to tear a page out and see
how many times you can fold it; to tear another one out and make it into a
paper airplane; to tear out yet another one, cut a hole in it, then fly the
paper airplane through the hole; to glue onion skin, orange peel or leaves to
another page; to draw an animal on a page, cut the page out, attach a string to
it, and take it for a walk; to cut out and interweave pages 103 and 105; and
much more in the same vein. There are also pages to color, such as one to
handle in a “backwards” way by leaving the page blank and coloring its edges.
There is a page to stain with a cold teabag, “then try to wash the tea into a
cup by pouring water over the page.” A lot of these destructive suggestions are
not really “backwards” in any meaningful way, although there are some attempts
to take the “backwards” theme seriously, or sort-of-seriously – for instance, suggesting
eating breakfast backwards by “slurping milk out of your bowl” and then eating
dry cereal, or saying to use a mirror to read the backwards words on a page.
Other activities, though, have nothing to do with “backwards” anything, such as
writing “hello” in “as many different languages as you can” and getting an
animal to make a paw print on one page. The overly elaborate elements here are
among the most overdone: “Tear this page out of the koob. Scrunch it up. Throw
it in the trash. Retrieve this page from the trash. Ask an adult to help you
iron it flat, and then stick it back into the koob.” There is enough outside-the-box
(or outside-the-book) thinking here to give Koob
a (+++) rating, but its single-use design and an overall sense that it is
trying too hard to be different mean that it will not be truly enjoyable for
many kids and families. Reading a book forward may be conventional, but
sometimes it is simply a better way to go than reading a koob sdrawkcab.